Harmony Korine On Skrillex, Gucci Mane, Spring Breakers, And Why Florida Is Like A Whole Other Country

It would be hard to miss the media blitz surrounding the release of Spring Breakers — the latest film from director Harmony Korine — which opened last weekend. As a fan of Korine’s earlier work, I have to admit I was a little scared by the Spring Breakers trailer. So much neon, so many guns, so many bad Club MTV Spring Break memories suddenly brought vividly back to life. Luckily, the film is much more interesting — and much, much weirder — than a simple crime caper and way more thematically tangled than a cinematic indictment of youth-gone-wild teen culture (though it’s a little of both). The film is, at least by Korine’s reasonably outré standards, a fairly straightforward narrative tucked inside what plays out like the loudest, most sun-baked Skrillex video/art-film ever made. In addition to showcasing James Franco at his most RiFF-RAFFiest and Gucci Mane at his gucciest, the movie is also an interesting treatise on female empowerment and a gorgeously filmed statement on the wonderful and often gross nature of being young, insane, and almost violently desperate to have fun. It’s also the kind of movie that, for whatever reason (perhaps because it’s such a sensory overload as you watch it), I found myself liking more and more in hindsight. It may not be brimming with the same abject weirdness so abundant in Korine’s earlier films (like Gummo or Trash Humpers), but it’s arguably the most strangely beautiful — and oddly affecting — movie he’s ever made. I had the chance to sit down with Korine last week and talk about it.